On “60 Minutes” Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez talked about a 70 percent tax rate for Americans earning more than $10 million a year. She said this would fund a Green New Deal: big money for renewable energy and technologies to avert climate catastrophe.

Some of us actually remember those halcyon days. Dad’s salary alone was enough to support a middle-class family of four or five, to buy a modest home, get the kids most of the way through college, and still swing a vacation on the Cape in July.

Hard to imagine now. But when the rich paid more, the government built highways and bridges. The MBTA parking garage wasn’t collapsing at Alewife station. The Red Line tracks weren’t catching on fire.

So why, asks New York magazine’s Eric Levitz, do we in the media call Republican Susan Collins of Maine, who voted for Trump’s tax scheme, a “moderate” instead of an pro-oligarch extremist? And why is Ocasio-Cortez, with her evidence-based tax proposal, derided as a know-nothing socialist kook?